The extent of the staffing crisis which has hit hospitals and nursing homes across the State has been chronicled for several weeks in this column and today the effect of staffing difficulties on patients who have contacted Hospital Watch are outlined.
Pascal said he was attacked recently and left bleeding and unconscious on a Dublin street. He was taken by ambulance to a major Dublin hospital and left sitting in a waiting room from Friday night until Sunday morning. "I do realise there is a major shortage of staff to run accident and emergency departments. This is not a new problem so why has it not been tackled before now?" he asked.
Dorothy recently took a relative to one of the State's major acute hospitals in the South and had to wait seven hours before she was told they could go home. "I found the staff, who are probably completely over-stressed and lacking in motivation, very unhelpful and unfriendly. I was very depressed leaving the hospital as I pay huge taxes and PRSI and this is what I get in return - a Third World service," she said.
"It is a shambles and a total disgrace and Government officials, who more than likely go to the Blackrock Clinic at the first sign of the flu, have absolutely no idea how bad our health service is," she added.
Tom said his father was waiting for a minor operation for over two years at a Dublin hospital and recently discovered the ward dealing with his complaint had been closed due to staff shortages.
Christina complained that a unit for elderly people at a general hospital in the mid-west was admitting men and women to the same ward. "There is no dignity in this for our senior citizens. Our hospital is in a sorry state, and the country booming," she said.
The daughter of a woman in a Dublin nursing home said she witnesses patients crying out for help several times a week when she visits her mother but they have to wait long periods for attention as there are only two nurses on each floor. "It's time the Government realised this and it's time they took immediate action to address the shortages. There is a crisis out there," she said.
A reader in the south east complained about the lack of radiation treatment facilities in her region. "I recently watched a loved one die of cancer and was sickened that he had to make horrendously painful journeys from Waterford to Dublin for this treatment," she said.
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